SAN DIEGO — Cal Fire has unveiled their latest tool in helping manage wildfires.
It's called a video wall, and it's one of just four used for firefighting in the entire state. The video wall was just installed at Cal Fire Headquarters in Rancho San Diego as part of a partnership with UC San Diego's Alert California program.
"Picture’s worth 1000 words. This gives us a lot of pictures, so we get a lot of information up there really quickly," said Suzann Leininger with Cal Fire.
Alert California manages more than 1100 cameras statewide in order to better understand wildfires and other natural hazards.
Using it, Leininger can display live camera feeds and maps of active fires, as well as weather conditions.
While much of that technology has been around for years, this allows all of it to be accessible and visible in one place, making it easier to communicate during a critical incident.
"I would say that people aren't going out there blind, as they used to. And so now we can give them information about what's going on before they even get on scene, so they can see what the smoke is doing. Sometimes, in the past, when they went out to an incident, they did not know what was going on unless they could see it from a distance, and then they wouldn't get more information until they got closer out there," said Leininger.
Leininger can also create a fire simulation, which estimates the intensity, the risk of it taking off, accessibility, the amount of people and buildings that are going to be impacted, as well as how dry the vegetation is.
"It's really a tool to give them better situational awareness and to keep them safer."
Zachary Wells with Kern County Fire admits the fire service has been slow to adopt technology, so it's time they started using something like this.
"The video wall is something that we've seen in other industries, and we're just bringing it to the fire service," said Wells.
The video walls have access to all 1100 plus cameras positioned all over California, 50 of which are in San Diego County.
"With all these video feeds, you can see how it'd be easy to get overwhelmed on a phone or a tablet or desktop. In these large video walls, you can show all 50 cameras that are available in the county of San Diego at one time, and then focus during a specific incident," said Wells.
Cameras are being added daily in hopes more video walls will be installed in dispatch centers everywhere.
"It's about keeping everybody safer," said Leininger.